
Switzerland Today
Greetings from Bern!
For people who live in beautiful parts of the world, tourists are often a necessary evil. OK, evil might be overdoing it, but they are welcomed and tolerated as long as they keep spending. So what happens when they arrive, block infrastructure and leave without contributing to the local economy? Unhappy locals – as the case of Bernese village Iseltwald, the location of a wildly popular South Korean Netflix series, shows.

In the news: Only 50% of Swiss are satisfied with the country’s seven-person government, the Federal Council. This figure was 15 percentage points higher at the end of 2021.
- Since then not only the Federal Council as a whole but also the individual Federal Councillors have lost popularity, according to a survey. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who also holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, remains the least popular minister. Interior Minister Alain Berset, who is in charge of the health ministry, remains at the top of the class, despite negative headlines in recent months.
- Covid-19 was the main cause of 12.2% of deaths in Switzerland in 2020, behind cardiovascular diseases (26.9%) and cancer (22.2%). While there are usually around 70,000 deaths in Switzerland in a normal year, in 2020 there were 76,195 deaths, 12.4% more than in the previous year, the Federal Statistical Office reported today. This increase was due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it said.
- Joel Wicki is the new “King of the Schwingers”. The 25-year-old from canton Lucerne has triumphed at the national wrestling championships, held every three years. The Schwingfest is the highpoint of a wrestling circuit that draws big crowds to events across the country: this year’s event was attended by an estimated 400,000 people.

The Swiss can’t seem to make up their minds about whether they want international film productions to be shot in their country or not. Mind you, for locals in the pretty village of Iseltwald, the answer’s definitely not.
A couple of weeks ago, Valais became the first Swiss canton to pay producers to film its landscapes and villages, reckoning that these costs would be recouped several times over in terms of accommodation, catering and equipment rental. And that’s not even taking into account tourists and film fans on pilgrimages. Previous productions that did wonders for a location’s image among tourists include The Man with the Golden Gun (Phuket, Thailand), Crocodile Dundee (Australia), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (New Zealand) and Game of Thrones (Northern Ireland, Croatia and Iceland).
However, Crash Landing on You, a South Korean romantic drama, is currently the bane of the picturesque Bernese village of Iseltwald. Fans from all over Asia are flocking to the village, population 420, sparking a backlash from locals and tourism officials. The final destination of these romantics is a wooden pier on Lake Brienz. This is where one of the main characters of the Netflix series plays the piano. As he plays, a girl he falls in love with arrives on a ferry from Interlaken.
The location has since become a must-see for fans of the series. When our journalist visited, about ten tourists were already waiting to get onto the relatively small pier and take pictures. All day, groups of about ten people rotated on the pier, eager to immortalise their trip with tripods, selfie sticks and even drones. When the next bus arrived a few hours later, more people join the queue. “We’re getting married in November and came here for a pre-wedding photo shoot. We chose this place because of the series. It’s very romantic,” said one Vietnamese couple.
Part of the problem seems to be that fans of the series arrive, take some photos and then leave. They’re not buying or eating anything or staying the night. “The village earns almost no extra income from these tourists. All that’s left is the rubbish that’s been thrown away. This is just ‘rubbish tourism’,” said one local.
For more comments – from Asian visitors and Swiss locals – as well as plenty of photos of the very photogenic location, read the article by Ruiko Ono from our Japanese service.
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It’s a sad first in the history of the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC): the mountain hut on the Mutthorn in the Bernese Oberland was not allowed to open this season. It was too dangerous.
Melting permafrost is causing the floor of the 127-year-old hut (pictured in 1952), located at 2,900 metres above sea level and with a spectacular view of the Kanderfirn, to slip downhill. Above the stone structure 100,000 cubic metres of rock are in motion. Large cracks are opening up. “We fear that soon the entire mass could fall and damage the refuge,” geologist Hans Rudolf Keusen told Swiss public television, SRFExternal link.
The Mutthorn hut faces permanent closure, but the manager wants to hold on to it. He even sees great economic potential if the glacier were to disappear completely. “Today the hut is accessible only for mountaineers,” says Roger Herrmann. “In the future, you won’t need a rope or a mountain guide to get to the hut. You’ll be able to walk over rocks through a landscape interspersed with mountain lakes. That will allow a completely different audience to visit the hut.”
Whether the hut’s owners agree remains to be seen. They will decide in January whether to keep it or dismantle it permanently.

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